Reuters published – then pulled – this story this morning. Hat tip to Drudge.

Now, what I want to know is what sort of communication occurred between White House officials and Reuters editorial staff between the time this story was published and the time it was pulled. This is an unusual move for a wire service to actually withdraw a published story. Why would the news organization do that? If there was specific misinformation, why not issue a retraction or a correction?

However, the fact that the story was pulled may draw even more attention to it. After all, it’s usually not the “incident,” but the cover-up of the incident that makes the most waves. In this case, if the WH was involved in getting the story pulled, maybe they will draw more attention to the issue than had they let it go without interference.

Again, I don’t know that the WH was involved. But killing bad stories is part of any good press operation, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if that’s what happened here.